November 13, 2020 UPDATE

A roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 13.11.2020, 19:47

COVID-19 IN ROMANIA – The government has decided to extend
the state of alert by a further thirty days as of Saturday. The head of the
department for emergency situations Raed Arafat said the sanitary measures
introduced earlier remain in place and will also apply to the parliamentary
elections due on December 6. He said the health and foreign ministries will
issue a joint decree referring specifically to the voting stations abroad. Arafat also said the government was planning
to temporarily allow medical school graduates and residents to practice
medicine so that they can work, under supervision, on wards treating coronavirus
patients. More than 343,700 coronavirus infections have been recorded so far in
Romania. Almost 9,500 new cases were reported on Friday. 1,149 people are in
intensive care. 174 new deaths were recorded, taking the death toll to 8,694.

COVID-19 IN THE WORLD – Over 53.3 million people have been
infected with coronavirus globally and more than 1.3 million have died,
according to the latest worldometers.info update. In many European countries,
the situation remains critical and governments are taking additional measures.
A nigh-time curfew came into effect on Friday in Greece and Portugal has
expanded restrictions to more areas. Slovenia has banned almost all public
gatherings, and Hungary is in lockdown for at least a month. In Italy, three
regions in the north are seeing new restrictions beginning today. France has
seen a 16% drop in new cases in the last 7 days, but the situation is sensitive
in hospitals, where the second wave is expected to peak next week. In turn,
health authorities in Belgium expect 10 to 20% of the population to develop
SARS-CoV-2 antibodies after the second wave of the pandemic, a percentage they
say will help slow down the spread of the virus, but which would make
impossible attaining herd immunity in the absence of a vaccine.

LIST – The National Committee for Emergency Situations has
updated the list of countries with a high epidemiological risk. The amber list
countries include Armenia, Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark,
France, Jordan, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain,
Portugal and Hungary. Arrivals from these countries are requested to isolate
for 14 days. Travellers to Spain from high-risk regions or countries will be
obliged to produce a negative result to a Covid test, beginning on November 23.
The Romanian foreign ministry is emphasizing that the test must be taken no
longer than 72 hours prior to entering Spanish territory and that the document
must be written in Spanish or English. The ministry also recalls that all
persons travelling to Spain must fill in a form about their state of health
before travelling.

MOLDOVA – In the Republic of Moldova, the election campaign
for the second round of presidential elections on Sunday came to a close on
Friday. In the first round of the election, former pro-European PM Maia Sandu
got over 36% of the votes, and the incumbent pro-Russian Socialist president,
Igor Dodon, under 33%. The candidates favoring the reunification with Romania
as well as the pro-European candidates,
who left the presidential race in the first round, made public their
unconditional support for Maia Sandu in the second round. The third-placed
candidate, the pro-Russian populist Renato Usatyi, has urged his voters, some
17% of those who voted in the first round, to vote for the former prime
minister. On Tuesday, Romania’s President, Klaus Iohannis expressed joy at the
news of the vote for the West-leaning candidate and deemed it a vote in favor
of the irreversible democratic evolution of the Republic of Moldova, a country
that has permanently and unequivocally been supported by Romania.

TERRORISM – The 27 EU Interior Ministers have called for
strengthening the security of the Schengen visa-free travel area and of the EU’s
external borders in a joint statement adopted on Friday following the latest
terror attacks in France and Austria. EU Ministers expressed their willingness
to finalize by the end of this year the current negotiations over a European
legislation on deleting online terrorist content within 1 hour. Five years
after the Jihadist attacks of November 13, 2015, the Ministers paid homage to
the 130 people killed in Paris and Saint-Denis and harshly condemned the latest
attacks in France and Austria.

UK VISAS – EU citizens will be able to travel to the UK
visa-free after January 1, 2021 for a period of 6 months, according to the new
immigration system made public by the British government. EU citizens can travel to the United Kingdom
for several times during that time span, but they are not allowed to live in
the UK, under the multiple entry and extended visa mechanism, nor are they
allowed to work or access public funds. Those willing to work, live or study in
the UK must request a visa. This visa will be granted based on a system of
points, after the applicants submit a visa request, on the website of the
British government. Points are granted in keeping with a set of requirements
that applicants should meet.

STATISTICS – The GDP dropped by 4.4% in the Eurozone and by
4.3% in the European Union in the third quarter of 2020 compared with the same
period last year. Spain saw the biggest drop, at 8.7%, while Romania recorded a
6% drop, according to a report by the EU statistical office Eurostat. The data
referring to Romania were supported by the country’s National Institute for
Statistics, which published a report saying the economy shrank by 6% in the
third quarter of the year compared with the same period last year, but it grew
by 5.6% compared with the previous quarter.

(Translated by C. Mateescu & V. Palcu)